Shock absorbers are used in vehicles to assist the vehicle in adapting to different driving conditions due to irregularities in the road, such as bumps, potholes, and other road surface anomalies. Shock absorbers are also used to assist a vehicle in traveling over more extreme conditions such as off-road driving.
In conditions such as off-road driving, the irregularities can be severe and may cause a standard shock absorber to bottom out, i.e. abruptly reaching their maximum compression, producing a jarring impact. In order to overcome this deficiency shock absorbers with jounce control have been developed. A jounce control shock absorber provides an elevated damping force when the shock approaches the bottoming out condition. However, known jounce control systems are limited in their effectiveness due to the fact that such system only provide one stage of an elevated damping force.